Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for editing a computer-aided design model for developing electronic control units in a design environment.
Description of the Background Art
Design models typically relate to models for mechatronically realized control and/or regulation in which physical parameters for control devices are to be assigned data, i.e., provided with additional data. These parameters are determined by means of sensors and processed in a control device by an algorithm into control variables for actuators. A prior-art application program in this field is, for example, TargetLink. Additional data can be applied there to a design model such as, e.g., information on scaling (conversion of the determined physical parameter into a numerical representation in the control device), which values can be calibrated later, whether the variables are stored in RAM or ROM after code generation, with which visibility they are applied, or whether a variable can be optimized (if it must be accessible to calibration or diagnostic systems, it may not be “optimized away”). This additional information is not relevant to the actual design environment, but is needed by another application program. For example, the additional data provide code generation-specific data for TargetLink. The invention can also be applied analogously, however, to additional data for requirements engineering tools or calibration tools.
It is typical in the model-based development environment to augment the design models with additional data for the diverse development steps.
Typically, these additional data are bound directly to the model object and are thereby linked to it persistently. As soon as the additional data are linked to the model objects, the design model can no longer be edited separately from the additional data.